


Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

by Garnigal



Category: Serenity (2005)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-05
Updated: 2010-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 07:00:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garnigal/pseuds/Garnigal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal's guiding force</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know

He’d never hated before, not really. He’d said it, a few times. Once to his mama when he was just a boy, angry about something he’d long since forgotten. His mama had cried, and he’d apologized and promised to never say those words again. Once to Jackson Stanley, when he found Jack in the hay mow with Denise Sullivan. They’d gotten in a fistfight the next day, and were friends again by noon.

And once to the recruiter for the Independent Army, the week they lost the farm because the Alliance had decided to change the tax laws on Shadow. He moved his mama into her brother’s house in town, and volunteered for the Army that same day.

He knew he didn’t really mean it, when he said it to his mama and to Jackson. But he knew he meant it when he volunteered.

He must have meant it. It was the only thing in his life that lasted.

Mama died before the end of the war, worn down by years of working too hard and having nothing to show for it.

Jackson volunteered for the Independent Army same time he did. But while he made it through the whole war, even surviving Serenity Valley, Jackson was one of the first casualties of the war, killed by a mine in an open field on the way to battle.

But the Alliance... his hatred for them had lasted almost his whole life. It changed his whole life. His hatred led him to volunteer. His hatred helped keep him sharp in the midst of a war zone. He fed off it, let it replace his need for sleep and food. His hatred gave him something to hold onto in a dark prison cell. It gave him something to flee from when he was finally released, and a reason to head for the furthest moons he knew of.

It wasn’t just the driving force in his life. It became his defining characteristic, writ large in a brown coat. It became his greatest pleasure, acted out in an annual fistfight. It informed his every decision, and was everything he was, and everything he wanted to be – mad, bad and dangerous to know, as they say.

But in the end, hatred, no matter the pleasure it gives, is a limiting emotion. It got him to where he was, but prevented him from moving forward. It kept him out on the edges of the Black, on the finest edge of survival. It kept him from finding love, from building something lasting with Inara. It kept him at arms length from his crew and the few friends he had left.

But he didn’t know any other way, didn’t know how to function without the hate. He thought he might just drift aimlessly if he didn’t have it pushing him.

His hatred got them through Miranda, got them back in the sky. But when he hit the Black with River at the helm, he couldn’t find the hate anymore. It must have drained out, along with most of his blood, during his fight with the Operative.

And words tumbled from his lips: a new guiding principle, a new driving force.

 _“Love. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down... tell you she’s hurting before she keens._

 _Makes her a home.”_


End file.
